The praxis of priviliged digitalised advocacy groups

There is an increasing need to investigate how digital stratification and mediation of policy processes affect the political position enjoyed by political actors with privileged access to governmental decision-makers. Is the political influence of the privileged actors increasing in the digital age? Or, on the contrary, is an increasingly fragmented public sphere decreasing the power of privileged actors, because they must now to share access with many other external actors? The privileged political actors (often organized interests or lobbyists) increasingly meet with policy makers in a series of mini-publics or issue-based networks. Online, these mini publics can be described as digitally stratified, i.e. enabled ,and structured by algorithms (and perhaps by AI, soon). In Denmark, these mini-publics can be seen as the result of three main developments in: 1) the rise of privileged pluralism, 2) the rise of a new form of political communication, where digital technology makes it possible to operate quickly and with even more specific target groups (e.g. a selection of political decisionmakers) – and 3) faster and stronger calculation of data for elucidating political ideas and proposals rooted in the spread of national economic calculation models. The power will focus on the praxis of these mini-publics, including how they now and then manifest themselves physically/offline, via a series of political conferences and summits (DI or KL summits, Folkemødet on Bornholm, etc.). The paper will describe the framework for and practice in these digital mini-publics. What and who sets the framework? And how is power exercised in and through them How is political information calibrated to specific target groups in and outside the formal political system? The presentation will also discuss whether these digitally stratified mini-publics are democratic. On the one hand, they provide and channel important political information. On the other hand, they are relatively closed and exclusive, as they are based on several unwritten rules and it requires large resources to participate strategically and actively.